


History

by stunrunner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Drinking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:24:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2411495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stunrunner/pseuds/stunrunner





	History

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwistaLolita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistaLolita/gifts).



“Another?” the bartender asked with a nod to Crowbar's empty glass.

He opened his mouth to decline, but the refusal stuck in his throat when the memories from earlier in the night flashed through his mind yet again. He cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said, “Sure. Why not.”

The speakeasy was quiet at this hour, home to only the last few barflies pounding the drinks that would see them into the quiet oblivion they sought before staggering home. The glug of the gin into the glass mirrored the sinuous liquid flow of his thoughts. Crowbar gave the bartender a nod as he cradled the cold moist glass. Condensation rolled down the sides of the glass in fat beads. He connected a few of them with the tip of his finger and watched the droplets race down to the table.

The bartender resumed scrubbing at the glasses with his rag. Crowbar idly wondered exactly how clean the rag was. “Rough night?” the bartender asked.

He laughed bitterly. “Something like that,” he said as he took the first gulp of his drink. The quinine bubbles of the tonic carried the juniper flavor of the gin to his tastebuds in prickling little bursts. It tasted like Christmas trees, but on the twenty-sixth—when you drag them to the curb, with their needles shedding and their magic gone.

Time passed. He looked at his watch occasionally, automatically, registering only the obtuse angle of the hands and not the meaning the angle imparted. The minutes swam by; the waterline inside his glass fell. The barkeep seemed to always be polishing the same glass. Hadn't he switched at some point? Crowbar couldn't say, only saw and ignored the same rotating motion as he mentally replayed the night over and over inside his head. He barely noticed when the drink was replaced again.

Fin's intel had been solid. They should've been able to pull the heist no problem. It had all gone perfectly until the fucking Midnight Crew had shown up, and sent everything straight to hell. Crowbar took a long gulp. The Crew _always_ showed up. Since when was he not able to account for their presence? Another sip. He should've figured out their plan. It wasn't even difficult. That layout, Felt coming on strong in the front... How had they sneaked up on him from the rear? Crowbar was used to being one step ahead, but he'd missed something, and then suddenly there had been that innard-liquefying sensation of a ring of cold steel against his temple and—

“Dry martini, with a twist,” someone ordered to the right.

A spark of alarmed recognition flared somewhere deep in his brain, but before he could process it, there was steel along his neck. Its honed edge bit into his Adam's apple as he swallowed. “Why, hello there, Droog,” Crowbar croaked against the stiletto. “Always a pleasure.”

The bartender hesitated behind the bar. “I don't want any trouble,” he began.

Crowbar forestalled him with open palms in a calming gesture. He didn't actually know if it was okay, but he knew that if Droog wanted him dead, he'd already be bleeding out on the floor. “It's fine,” he said. “Dry martini, like he said.”

“With a twist.”

“Right.” Crowbar chuckled. The knife came away from his throat, vanishing up Droog's sleeve, and he coughed more from relief than anything else. “God forbid we forget the twist.” He swiped at his neck with a cocktail napkin to blot the single drop of blood blossoming from the nick.

The glass slid quickly into Droog's hand, far quicker than Crowbar's had into his. But then, Crowbar didn't run spirits to half the bars in the city. Men didn't push their women and children behind them when he walked down the street. He wasn't a member of the infamous Midnight Crew. 

Droog sipped his drink slowly. Crowbar knew this routine. Diamonds would be in no hurry. He had plenty of time to wait. But hey, Crowbar had a fresh drink and a good buzz, so what was the rush?

The bar was empty aside from the two men perched on their stools, and the bartender who was doing his best to look maximally busy and minimally curious at the far end of the bar. The last nickel's worth of music finished warbling out of the dusty jukebox in the corner, and the room was silent but for the clinking of ice cubes in their glasses and the bartender's muted bustling. The soft scratch of the flint as Droog lit a cigarette with a flick of his thumb. The quiet hissing exhalation of smoke.

Crowbar waited, rubbing at the tumbler with his thumb. He had nowhere to be, and the man who speaks first loses, gives ground in rushing to fill the dead air. Droog had taught him that one, a long time ago. 

Droog's posture was a study in relaxed idleness. The cigarette drooped lazily from one hand. His other moved in small fluid circles to swirl the contents of his glass around and around; his body was a sinuous diagonal, leaning slightly away from Crowbar with one foot planted firmly on the floor and the other tapping casually against the pole of his stool. Someone who didn't know him well might say he was at ease.

Crowbar knew better. Diamonds Droog was not a man of wasted motion, but he was a man of precise manipulations. The act was an act, and a knowingly transparent one. He knew Crowbar knew he was still a coiled snake, lax muscles deceptively ready to tense and strike.

_Ah, what the hell_ , he thought. “So,” he said. Maybe it was the gin, but it seemed like he could feel Droog's attention sharpening at the word, raising goosebumps on the back of his neck as surely as the edge of the dagger had. “What do you want?”

Droog grinned. It looked genuine, but it didn't soften the predatory gleam in his dark eyes. Had his teeth always been that white? “Want?” he asked, feigning innocence. “A man can't just happen to run into an acquaintance in a bar on a nice summer evening?”

Crowbar dragged his eyes away from Droog's teeth. “A man? Maybe. You're not a man. You're a... You're a shark.” The words tumbled from his mouth without the intervention of his gin-soaked brain. He wondered what he meant by them, but they felt true.

Droog arched one aristocratic eyebrow. “And you're drunk,” he countered. He sounded amused.

“This isn't your first bar of the night.”

A deep throaty chuckle. Slick sounded like a garbage disposal full of gravel when he laughed, but Droog was chocolate, velvet, or maybe liquid mercury. “You're implying I am too, then?” he asked.

Crowbar shook his head. The bar spun a little, but he tried to be subtle about leaning forward onto the table. “No,” he said, “though I'd bet that's not your first martini. But what I meant is, you've been looking for me.” He took the last of his drink in a single gulp, slamming the glass down emphatically. “Which makes 'just happen to' more than a little disingenuous, if you ask me.”

“I didn't.”

Crowbar laughed. He knew he shouldn't—saw Droog's lips compressing, his eyes narrowing just the slightest bit—but he couldn't help it. “Jesus,” he said, “you really haven't changed at all, have you?”

Droog shrugged. “Why should I?”

Crowbar couldn't answer that. He wondered if the bartender would be willing to give him another drink, or if he'd already pissed himself in terror at the other end of the bar.

Droog's stool slowly rotated so that he was facing Crowbar directly. He tried not to notice, couldn't resist smoothing his suit nervously. Droog's eyes scanned every inch of him like a laser on a barcode. Beep beep, one ninety five plus tax. Beep beep, second rate mob “leader” who couldn't control a barrel of green chucklefucks if his life depended on it. He felt the examining pressure of Droog's eyes on every inch of his flesh; he hated how he wouldn't miss a single flinch, a momentary tensing of the shoulder, a slight twist away from the bar.

Crowbar finally settled for a change of subject. "I'll ask again. What do you want?" He chanced a glance out of the corner of his eyes.

Droog leaned in right next to Crowbar's ear. "I want what you want," he purred, and Godhead help him, that voice reached down inside Crowbar, yanking up memories he'd thought he'd buried for good, and it took all his strength not to tell Droog how he wanted him to slam him down onto the bar and fuck him until he screamed.

"If you're going to kill me, Droog, save me the mind games and just do it." Crowbar was proud of the way his voice didn't tremble, even when Droog leaned closer and hot breath tickled Crowbar's neck.

The tension released with a sudden chuckle. Crowbar turned his head just in time to see another martini slide into Droog's waiting hand. His eyes met Droog's as he took a slow sip of gin and vermouth. _Always one step behind_ , Crowbar thought wistfully, watching the up-and-down bob of Droog's throat when he finally swallowed, but he settled back into his seat nonetheless. What the hell. He signaled for another drink with a twitch of a finger. The gin and tonic slid into his hand before his index finger had hit the tabletop. He made a note to himself to tip well, whatever happened.

And whatever happened would be up to Diamonds, much as it galled him. The two matched drinks, sip for sip, as the liquid lines approached the bottom of their glasses and the clock rotated steadily closer to closing time.

"Last call," the bartender cried. Crowbar gulped down the last few drops of his drink, pushed the glass across the bar, and fumbled in his jacket with clumsy fingers. By the time he handed over a fistful of bills to cover his tab (and then some) and turned back to Droog, he faced only an empty barstool with a neatly folded wad of cash tucked under the edge of the martini glass.

Crowbar whipped his head to the door just quickly enough to catch a glimpse of Droog's back as he slipped out into the night, despite the way the bar whirled queasily from the sudden movement. He knew he should be glad to see him gone, but instead of relief, a white-hot rage churned in his guts. Droog was always leaving. It wasn't fair; Crowbar wasn't going to let him just... just _stroll away_ at his leisure like that. He stormed through the door—as much as he could, with his rolling, stumbling gait. He didn't know if he was going to kiss Droog or kill him, but he wasn't going to just let him leave. Not again.

"DROOG!" he yelled as he strode out to the parking lot. "Get back here, you sonnuva—"

He cut off at a pressure in his back, and had just a moment to think, _Oh shit._ In that half a second before the pain bloomed, it could almost be a massage from a lover hitting a ticklish spot, but he'd been in this business long enough to know what a dagger in the ribs felt like. There was certainly no question about it when his brain caught up with his viscera and a searing bolt of pain brought him to his knees. "What the FUCK, Droog," he said through gritted teeth. He knew he should be getting out his handkerchief and trying to stop the bleeding, but his hands weren't quite cooperating.

"Don't worry," that soft, velvety voice said against his ear. He could drown in that voice. "I didn't cut anything important. You'll live as long as you can keep from bleeding out before that tailor of yours notices. But perhaps next time..." 

Crowbar felt Droog's hands on his neck, ghosting down the lines of his shoulders. He froze, paralyzed between the urge to recoil in disgust and, even now, with that sticky red spot spreading across the back of his jacket, the urge to lean into his hands for more of his touch.

Droog chuckled. "...You'll consider my offer a little more carefully."

Crowbar opened his mouth for a sassy retort, but the pain and the gin swirled together in his head and tied his tongue in knots. Black spots swam across his vision. The last things he heard before the pavement rose to meet his cheek were Droog's retreating footsteps and his low hum of two notes, repeating faster and faster until Crowbar slipped into unconsciousness and jumbled dreams of shark teeth, long and wicked and gleaming white.


End file.
